North Tried To Hide Gift, Witness Says

June 24, 1987|By WILLIAM E. GIBSON, Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- Lt. Col. Oliver North got a $16,000 security system built around his house and then sent back-dated phony letters to cover up the fact that he never paid for it, a security consultant told congressional investigators on Tuesday.

The $16,000 cost actually was paid by retired Maj. Gen. Richard Secord, according to testimony by consultant Glenn Robinette. And Secord, one of North`s private operators, was reimbursed from secret bank accounts that included proceeds from the secret arms deal with Iran, according to documents submitted to congressional investigators.

Several members of the select committees investigating the Iran-Contra scandal said the evidence surrounding North`s home security system showed a clear violation of a federal law that prohibits a government official from accepting a gratuity or other forms of payoffs.

North`s allegedly phony letters, which were presented in the hearing room on huge display boards, were the clearest evidence presented so far undermining his image as a patriot operating secret deals out of the White House without a profit motive.

``The whole thing was just a great story that was cooked,`` concluded Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.

Other panel members variously called it ``a well-orchestrated effort to conceal the truth,`` an ``action calculated to deceive the authorities,`` an ``endeaver to mislead and cover your tracks.``

Robinette, a raspy-voiced, silver-haired former CIA official who appeared in a gray business suit, agreed to testify only after being granted limited immunity. He acknowledged he knew from the beginning that the security arrangements for North`s house were wrong and possibly illegal.

``I was trying to help Col. North,`` he testified. ``I think you make a mistake if you lead with your heart and not your head, which is what I did.``

He said North worried about flashing lights from passing cars, suspicious objects placed near his mailbox, threatening telephone calls and potential terrorist acts against his household. Robinette arranged last year to install an electronic gate and other security devices around the North house, and Secord paid him a total of $16,000.

Robinette said North asked Robinette for a bill last November, six months after the system was installed and a few days after North was fired from the National Security Council.

The surprised security consultant said he sent two phony and back-dated billing letters and that North responded with two phony back-dated letters in return, apparently to try to establish that he intended all along to pay for the security system.

The two North letters, one of them formal and full of legalese and the other a warm and friendly note, invented various arrangements for paying for the system, Robinette said. The two letters, one dated May and the other October, arrived in one envelope on the same day in December, Robinette said.

``You sent phony bills and he sent back phony letters?`` the consultant was asked, and he ruefully answered, ``Yes.``

Robinette testified he had originally been hired by Secord in March 1986 to gather evidence against the Christic Institute, a group that had filed a lawsuit against Secord and other members of the private network that supplied assistance to the Nicaraguan rebels after Congress cut off official American aid.

Secord paid him $4,000 a month for that service, usually in cash, Robinette said.

In an interview Tuesday with The New York Times, Secord denied that he had given any money to Robinette for North`s security system. He said he had paid Robinette $4,000 a month plus expenses to investigate the lawsuit, and he suggested Robinette could have used some of that money to underwrite the gate.

``He told me he thought it would be a fairly small amount of money and he would be repaid by North,`` Secord said.